A place for us to share with the world what goes on here - warts and all, and to fantasize about someday really understanding what it means to be "self-sufficient"...

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

The view from here...

...here being vacation. We needed a quick get-away, and we have a bit of a tradition...we've been taking the first week in January in Ft. Myers Beach with my parents for a few winters now, and we figured it would be testing fate to do otherwise...

Besides, we have an excellent farm sitter, and this was the view out the front window the day before we left:

Wouldn't you leave?

My two favorite photos from vacation are kind of different. I took them both on a walking tour of the Audobon Society Cypress Forest preserve outside of Ft. Myers. They have 2.25 miles of boardwalk winding through a cypress swamp and several complementary habitats for endangered and native Florida wildlife and birds.

Here is a close up of some fungi on the boardwalk rails:

And here is a butterfly; dead on the swamp waters, seen from the boardwalk. Even beautiful in death...

I noticed both of these by trying to follow our zen guidance for January - walk slowly through life and appreciate what is. Hmmm...

My how tall the Sprout is getting! :) And I'm with you...as I get older, I think winter is a sport best viewed from afar...like from a beach in New Zealand. We are having our "normal" January thaw which takes the 4 ft. of snow and ice and compacts it down to about a ft., then melts making me have to slog through 4 inches of mud to the barn. At least it's better than shoveling the snow! (or so I keep telling myself)It's a sad thing that I realized today that taking three lambs to slaughter on this coming Monday (to the Prescott area) will be the first time I've been away from the Farm overnight in 18 months.